The Pentagon Barracks, the site where the citizens of the Florida
Parishes declared their independence from Spain in 1810Courtesy of the Louisiana
Division of Historic Preservation
{photo2}{courtesy2}

Because they do not fit the state's well known French Creole and River
Road plantation stereotypes, Louisiana's Florida Parishes are little
known outside the state. However, citizens of South Louisiana (and especially
of New Orleans) have enjoyed the region's natural beauty and healthy
climate for well over a century. The Florida Parishes lie east of the
Mississippi River and north of lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain in the
southeastern portion of the state. The region contains eight parishes:
East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, West Feliciana, Livingston, St. Helena,
St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, and Washington. Although the area's name implies
cohesiveness and a shared developmental pattern, this is not completely
true. Certain parishes share a common heritage, while others followed
divergent patterns of growth. Plantation and small farm agriculture,
railroads, the lumber and vacation industries, and multiple ethnic groups--all
have contributed to the growth and heritage of the region known as the
Florida Parishes.

The district takes its name from its early political history. At the
end of Louisiana's colonial era, the region was part of Spanish West
Florida. When Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the United States
in 1803, the Americans claimed the area as part of that purchase but
made no move to occupy it. In 1810 the district's largely English population
revolted against Spain and the U.S. annexed the territory. Spain protested
the annexation, but was too weak to fight it. Louisianians have called
the region the Florida Parishes ever since.

Cottage
Plantation, an early plantation house in West Feliciana Parish which
reflects English and Spanish influencesCourtesy of Lagniappe Tours, Foundation for Historical Louisiana

Although Lake Pontchartrain's north shore underwent limited French Creole
settlement before and after the colonial period, persons of English descent
dominated in most other portions. For example, in East and West Feliciana
parishes, planters from the southeastern states established a plantation
economy whose landscape was characterized by houses in the Federal and
Greek Revival styles. Farther east, in what would become Washington Parish,
the Upland South Culture prevailed.

Remembered for their Protestant fundamentalism and their strong-minded
toughness, the Uplanders were descended from Scots-Irish farmers who
emigrated to the Pennsylvania colony beginning in the 1720s. It was
during this period that they encountered the Pennsylvania Germans, known
to us today by the misnomer Pennsylvania Dutch. The two groups cohabited
for about a generation. The Scots-Irish absorbed from the Germans a
building technique that would become their principal architectural legacy--log
construction. Armed with this tool and a fiercely independent streak,
the Scots-Irish pushed south and westward through the Appalachians,
first reaching Louisiana about 1790. There they established widely dispersed
hamlets and farmsteads featuring an informal arrangement of log barns,
sheds, animal pens and houses placed seemingly at random.

Knight Cabin, an example of a single
room log cabin in Washington Parish, built in the late 1800sCourtesy of the Capital Resource Conservation and Development
Council

In keeping with the basic simplicity and adaptability of the Upland
South Culture, its building forms were based on easy to duplicate folk
models. Houses emulated the so-called British pen tradition i.e., a
single square, or nearly square room with a gable roof oriented from
side to side and an outside chimney on one end. The pen was raised one
to three feet off the ground on piers and had doors centered in its
front and rear walls. In Louisiana a log single-pen house tended to
be about 16 feet square. A two-room house was a double pen, generally
with two front doors. Larger still was the dogtrot, which consisted
of two pens with a central covered open passageway through which a dog
could trot. These houses had full front galleries and often rear shed
rooms as well.

Today few people wish to live in a historic log house, and log outbuildings
are of no use in modern agriculture. For these reasons, most of Louisiana's
log buildings generally were long ago abandoned or altered beyond recognition.
Although a few survive in north and west Louisiana, the state's most
impressive collection is the Mile Branch Settlement located on the Washington
Parish Fairgrounds in Franklinton.

While Washington Parish developed at the hands of the Uplanders (and
a thriving lumber industry which arrived around the turn of the 20th
century), the area of the Florida Parishes bordering Lake Pontchartrain
owes its fame to its role as a health and vacation resort. Long before
the arrival of the railroad in 1887 made the trip from the Crescent
City an easy weekend commute, New Orleanians viewed the North Shore
as a haven from the annual yellow fever epidemics that threatened their
city. While the wealthy took refuge in faraway fashionable spas, middle-class
people went to the nearby Gulf Coast or to lower St. Tammany and Tangipahoa
parishes.

The Pavilion
at Abita Springs, a popular resort spot for New Orleans residents
from the late 19th century until the 1960sCourtesy of the Capital Resource Conservation and Development
Council

Known as the North Shore, the latter had much to recommend it as a retreat
from the languid New Orleans climate. First there was the air, which was
sharp, fresh and pure. Popularly known as ozone, it was thought to have
great curative powers for pulmonary respiratory ailments. This medicinal
property was attributed to the area's vast stands of long and short leaf
pine which exuded a rich oxygenated mix. Equally important was the water.
The terra firma of lower St. Tammany and Tangipahoa constituted one of
the world's great natural water purification systems with huge underground
lakes supplying dozens of mineral springs. The word hydropathy has passed
from common use, but in Victorian times, the water cure was a respected
alternative to the harsh medical practices of the day.

Hotels and spas sprang up as far above the lake as Covington and Hammond
to serve the health conscious and infirmed. However, Abita
Springs was the most significant; it was founded and developed as
a health resort and had no other purpose. In addition to providing accommodations
on the North Shore, city fathers and spa owners also took steps to enhance
the health-giving springs and natural areas with improvements, notably
bandstands, pavilions, and specially developed winding trails through
the piney woods. Attracted by the area's natural and man-made features,
people came for social as well as medical reasons and often stayed for
weeks or months at a time. Pleasure grounds surrounding hotels often
contained groups of rental cottages that could be taken by an entire
family. These long-term guests were important members of the social
scene and received invitations to special events along with local residents.

Many New Orleans families built vacation and weekend cottages on the
North Shore. Partially as a result of their presence, the region developed
its own architectural stamp, the so-called North Shore house. This unique
regional house type is a variation of the New Orleans shotgun. Characterized
by a T-shaped floorplan, it is one room wide and three or more rooms
deep. Instead of the standard narrow front porch, North Shore houses
have a long and generous side gallery to allow occupants to take the
air. Some North Shore houses have galleries on both sides. With their
extravagant Eastlake turned columns, spindles and brackets, and copious
Queen Anne shingles in their gables, these homes are the glory of the
North Shore. Today, concentrations of these houses can be found in Covington
and around Abita Springs.

The advance of medical theory after the Spanish American and First
World wars eliminated diseases such as yellow fever and undermined the
medical necessity for the North Shore refuge. Another factor in its
decline was that hydropathy itself was going out of favor as conventional
medicine improved. Today the area still has great rural charm, with
its towering pine trees, and is also quite cosmopolitan due to its proximity
to New Orleans. Great restaurants and shops combine with natural beauty
and a distinctive history to make the North Shore an obvious choice
for a day trip or weekend getaway.

The casual lifestyle of the health resorts was in sharp contrast to
that of Tangipahoa's hardworking strawberry farmers. The phenomenal
rise of this industry in the first few decades of the 20th century is
a classic Louisiana success story. One of the driving forces behind
this success was the influx of Italian immigrants into the parish.

The Italians were originally recruited from their homeland to work
in the cane fields of South Louisiana. They first appeared in Tangipahoa
in 1890, when an American strawberry farmer brought an Italian family
from New Orleans to pick his berries. This experience gave the Italians
a first-hand knowledge of strawberry farming. A second family arrived
in the fall. From their humble beginnings as pickers in the late 19th
century, the Italians rapidly moved into a position of dominance in
the strawberry industry.

The Italians saw in Tangipahoa Parish an opportunity to acquire land
and escape the life of an urban worker or plantation laborer. The Italians
were extremely efficient and successful strawberry farmers. A study
conducted by an agricultural commission during this period noted that
the techniques employed by the Italians stand out in contrast to the
more or less shiftless and thriftless southern methods employed by native
farmers. The entire family, even the children, would work in the berry
fields and live as cheaply as possible, saving everything they could.
After a few years, they would make a down payment on whatever land they
could obtain. Often this land was near the railroads, which provided
the means of getting their crop to market. In this way, a number of
ethnic agricultural colonies arose throughout the parish. Amite, Tickfaw,
and Natalbany all had small compact Italian farming settlements. There
was also a large Italian settlement in Hammond. However, the biggest
concentration of Italians was in Independence where the colony stretched
for five miles up and down the Illinois Central Railroad by 1910. By
this time, Italians had virtually taken over the town. Business signs
in the Independence commercial district were in Italian rather than
English!

By the early 1920s Tangipahoa strawberries supplied the entire Midwestern
market; soon Louisiana was the country's leading producer. However,
the resulting prosperity was not to last. Drought and frost in the 1927
and 1928 seasons reduced profits sharply and put many farmers heavily
in debt. By the 1929-1930 season, a number of farmers were in serious
financial trouble. In 1932 the industry suffered the greatest crop failure
it had ever experienced. Twelve and one half inches of rain in one day
in April, followed by a hailstorm later in the month virtually destroyed
the crop. This season was the death knell of the strawberry boom, for
the industry never recovered its former prosperity. However, strawberries
continue to be an important crop, as Ponchatoula's annual strawberry
festival, held every April, attests.